It is a strange thing, a wedding between two people who have nobody else in the world. We did not put much planning into it, for several reasons. There is little to plan, when the guest list is empty. Artur is still alive and hunting us, even though he does not know where we are. And most importantly… Autumn knows exactly what kind of wedding she wants, and she has known for a long time.

I stand before what is perhaps the eeriest chapel I have ever stood in. Coming from Russia, that is saying quite a lot. The roof is sagging, and I could have sworn the place is haunted from the moment I stepped inside. The walls are high and dark, and all the faces on the stained-glass windows look so deathly still and pensive that you would think this is a funeral instead of a wedding.

And that is exactly how Autumn likes it.

My suit is jet black and perfectly fitted, showing off the finer points that Autumn appreciates about my build. The black gives way to a matching blood red vest and tie that form a strip down the middle of my torso. No other color was better suited to my dark passions for the young woman about to come through the chapel doors. My beard is perfectly groomed, but I have shortened it along with my hair to suit the new life I am about to build with Autumn here in America.

When the organ begins hammering out the wedding march, I can’t help but feel my heart swell as the door opens and reveals my bride.

Autumn’s naturally radiant beauty is graced by a black wedding dress that trails behind her. I had one custom made for her, and its folds resemble elegant dried leaves, like the first leaves of autumn hitting the cold ground. The dress and her pale skin fit in with the aesthetic of the chapel so perfectly that she seems more like a ghost, a specter of the past haunting this holy place, rather than a living woman. In her hands is the most vibrant bouquet of red roses I have ever seen.

She is beauty given human form.

And best of all, she only has a few steps to walk before she can smile up at me as I offer her my arm. I am walking her down the aisle, not because she has nobody to give her away. I walk her because I am her Daddy now, and I choose to give her away to nobody but myself.

It was her request, and I am happy to oblige.

“This is perfect,” she whispers to me as we march down the aisle together, soft light from outside filtering through the faces of dead saints all around us. “Thank you, Daddy.”

“Anything for my little girl,” I say, squeezing her gently and beaming proudly.

The minister at the end of the aisle regards us carefully, but neither of us are ashamed of the age difference. We both know what we want in life, and now, we will be getting it.

We reach the altar, and the minister drones on, but his words are just a formality. Both of us are waiting for our vows, and when the time comes to give them, I feel a lump in my throat that I have not felt in a long time.

“Autumn,” I say in my accented English, “this is but a pause in the fast life we have started together. But more than ever before, I feel as though this is a life that is my own, and it makes me the happiest man alive to be able to share it with someone like me. I have worked for others in all these years, always biding my time and working toward freedom. And now I have it with you—because of you, in large part. And so, it only makes sense to give you my heart, and to swear to you that I will protect you and cherish you for all the days of my life. We were both born in darkness, my love. Let us step into a brighter future we can be proud of.”

Autumn’s beautiful tears are rolling down her face by the time I finish, and even the minister can’t help but smile at her as she gets her bearings to speak. Our vows are carefully guarded so as not to let the truth be known to the innocents who are marrying us, but nothing is keeping us from expressing ourselves.

“Vladimir,” she says through a thick voice, “I… have never known the kind of love you have given me. I never even knew this kind of love could exist, much less grow so strong. I…” She laughs at herself, and I give her a warm, reassuring smile as we hold hands. “I love you, Vladimir, more than words can say. You’ve completed a part of my soul that lets me see the good in the world, because we’ve endured the worst of it. That gives me an incredible hope in the middle of the darkest part of the night. And for that, I give you myself and everything I am. Forever,” she adds.

The most embarrassing part of it all is that I am such a storm of blissful emotions that the ring exchange is a blur to me. We do it, though, and somewhere along the way we trade our I Dos, but the minister’s last words stick out through the wonderful haze.

“By the power vested in me by the state of New York, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride.”

I sweep Autumn off her feet, bridal-style, and I press a kiss to her gasping lips before she throws her arms around me to hold herself up.

She is mine forever, my dark prize that I claimed in the midst of the greatest crime and escape of my life. My Autumn.

My girl.

And now, all I have to do is take care of the final detail standing between us and eternal happiness.

The throbbing strobe light of the seedy nightclub in New York City couldn’t be a more stark contrast to the almost haunting silence of the chapel where I got married two nights ago. Heavy bass pounds overhead in what would be pitch blackness, if not for the dim red lights along the walls, the many glowing neon accessories the partygoers are wearing, and that seizure-inducing strobe.

Artur Gregorovitch was not hard to track.

He lives his life fast and loud. He has kept his nose out of mafia business proper for his whole life, both because he is not interested and because his father has been smart enough to keep him out of it. The boy is an idiot, but he is an idiot with unlimited money, a short temper, and an insatiable desire for distractions.

That is what I imagine brought him to this club. It’s the kind of place you don’t get to without knowing the right people, and many of the things that happen here are not legal. I stand at a dark corner of the room, watching the dance floor in front of me. It is a sea of people old and young, almost all of them strung out on hallucinogenic drugs and strong alcohol. The dance floor is less of a dance and more of a thick, chaotic mosh pit of bodies getting wild to the harsh music.

I hate this place, personally.

But this is the place I learned that Artur has been gracing the city at night to satisfy his cravings, and so, here I am. Every part of me wants to hurry up and take Autumn on a honeymoon that will last in our minds forever, but neither of us want to relax until we have all loose ends tied. And I’m tying the last of them tonight.

In fact, that loose end is a mere ten feet away from me.

He’s wearing a designer tracksuit, grinding up against a couple of women who, like him, are probably too drugged up on ecstasy to care who they’re with.

After a few minutes of watching him, I make my way over to the DJ. The bouncer standing nearby gives me a once-over and a stern look, but I slip him a crisp bill to let me through. I step up behind the DJ so that he can’t see me, and I wave a $100 in front of him. He takes it, but instead of trying to speak to him, I simply jab my thumb up, indicating that I want him to turn the volume up.

He shrugs, nods, and does as I say.

The music starts thumping harder than it might have ever done before, to the point that it’s almost painful. But the ecstatic crowd loves it, and the mosh pit descends into absolute chaos. I watch more sober people start to look panicked as they dance and grind closer and more violently with each other, and I even see a couple of people trying to get to the bar fail, because the wall of humans is simply too thick.

Perfect.

A hunter stalking his prey, I descend back into the crowd and start moving through it. I know how to weave my way through a raving crowd safely, largely thanks to my size and strength, but there’s an element of skill to doing it without attracting too much attention.

Making my way up from behind Artur is child’s play.

I slide the syringe I have ready out from my sleeve, and I hold it close by my side as I come up on him. I can hear him shouting something incoherent to the women at his side, with a snide tone and his hand on one of their asses. She looks disgusted, and she turns to get away, but he grabs her ass. She forces her way through a couple of dancers, and before Artur can follow her, I catch him by the scruff of his collar.

With one solid swing, I bring the syringe up under his arm and inject the lethal serum into his bloodstream. I doubt he even feels it. But he does feel it when I yank him back and whisper the last words he’ll ever hear into his ear.

“For my girl.”

By the time he turns around, I am gone, melted into the crowd like a shadow. I retreat to a shadowy wall, and I watch him look around wildly for whoever grabbed him. He’s red in the face at first, and he tries to push his way out, but soon, I see his face melt from anger into concern, then fear. He starts patting people on the shoulder, trying to get their attention, but nobody pays him any mind.

His bodyguards are long gone. I saw to that half an hour ago.

His face goes red again, but this time, it starts to turn purple. He starts to sink into the crowd, and despite his shouting, nobody can hear him, and if they can, they don’t care.

Soon, I smile as I watch Artur Gregorovitch’s body getting tossed around like another raving party goer. The people bumping up against him don’t even know he has just been claimed by a very fast-acting toxin.

Anonymously as I entered, I make my exit, as much of a shadow as the rest of the clientele of this place.

As for Artur’s father, the man who escaped my blaze of gunfire that night what feels like a lifetime ago? The cell phone that Autumn gave me was handy in taking care of that last night. I sent a message to a well-known hitman over a non-encrypted line after hacking into the phone. The message, of course, was an explicit offer of money for the life of his own son, who I said had become too much of a nuisance. That phone belonged to him, meaning every INTERPOL agent from Portugal to the east coast of Russia will be closing in on the Gregorovitch compound in a matter of days.

Especially once news of Artur’s death becomes public tomorrow morning.

It’s over.

We are free at last, to build a beautiful future… with my girl.